The warlock ordered a space cleared around the heap, enough for a hundred demons. The crowd shuffled to the hall’s perimeters. Now there was standing room only in the keep’s cramped hall.
Morwen’s dagger scratched spidery symbols on the ground to contain the horde she was about to conjure.
“Light it up,” Morwen said upon finishing.
Szat hurled a fireball at the bleeding pile.
The air filled with smoke and the sweet aroma of roasting meat. Szat’s mouth drooled, and he jumped from Morwen’s shoulder. Morwen grabbed him and bundled him up. “Just one, just a little toe, anything,” he sobbed as he thrashed helplessly in her arms.
“Kaexo kl’t grotl aerb aerb larau dv v’tl. Maexo Gauar ag Saerkvaab’t raqo r’go ae kadobv ag ouuaut aerb vae’r,” Morwen chanted. Shadowy figures snatched up their offerings and disappeared.
The only movement was the trembling of the audience. Then flesh slowly bubbled from the stone floor and formed into grotesque and horrifying demons. The shadowlands had sent their mongrels, their expendables, wastrel demons fit only for slaughter and to be slaughtered. Even Morwen gulped at their monstrousness. Perfect, she thought.
The demons paced the circle, like wild beasts, eying the crowd hungrily. People scrambled over one another to get as far away as they could.
“Open the door,” Morwen yelled. She didn’t know how long the circle would hold the monsters from their butchery.
Two guards lifted the bolt. The door burst open, and the toadoks spilled inside. They croaked in excitement and lurched at choice victims for their pot. Their eagerness was extinguished when they saw the horde of baying demons.
“Kill them,” Morwen commanded pointing at the toadoks.
The demons surged forward. The toadoks fled before them in terror. Szat hitched a ride with a horror that stood over seven feet tall. Five of those feet were massive, muscled legs capable of kicking down a house. The demon whooped as he flung fireballs at any toadoks in range.
Morwen followed them outside and waited in the bailey. The stones were lit gold and jasper by the glow of Szat’s victims. Jasin joined her and together they waited in silence for the demons to return.
Morwen gave up the vigil after the forty-seventh returned with a half-eaten toadok carcass slung over its back. She doubted all of those absent were casualties of the fight. More than likely, they’d taken the opportunity to escape. Still, she had more than enough to take control of Wichsault.
“Get rid of them,” Jasin said.
Morwen smiled. Was she really that obvious?
Jasin’s hand went to the hilt of her sword, “I said, get rid of them.”
Only Jasin stood between Morwen and control of this crumbling kingdom. Szat’s eyes were closed in bliss as he chomped on a toadok’s leg. Her demons were stretched out on the stone, sleeping off their full bellies.
It was down to her. She had no qualms about killing the sergeant. She’d insulted her sister’s honour by sleeping with her betrothed. It was personal as well as necessary. Morwen dragged the sharpened nail of her thumb across her scared wrist. Warm fluid seeped from the wound. One word was all that needed to be spoken, the shadows would be hers to command, and Jasin would be a dead woman.
There was clang of metal on stone as the sewer grate was flung aside, and a figure, smeared in sewer excrement, crawled from the hole. “Goron,” Jasin gasped. World conquest forgotten, both Jasin and Morwen—out of curiosity rather than concern—hurried to him.
“Goron! Are you all right?” Jasin asked. Tears welled in the tough warrior’s eyes.
“I have a terrible taste in my mouth. Could I trouble you for a beer?”
Unable to close his eyes or block his ears to the sights and sounds of being eaten alive, Goron turned his mind inward. He recalled the memories of happier times, bedroom gymnastics, barrels of ale that never seemed to run dry, and days when his weary body could barely swing his axe, slick with the blood of his enemies. He fervently hoped in his forever after—in the Summerlands of Murdus—eternity would be full of such pursuits.
When Goron’s mind grew tired of reliving the same memories a dozen times over, it tentatively listened for the gory sounds of feasting rodents. It heard only the drip of water. Goron dared his eyes to turn outward from the writhing, naked figures and bloody battlefields to the rats. He found them paralysed beside him. The poison that had frozen his muscles had had the same effect on them.
Justiciar Yeston drained what was left of the bottle of wine and tossed it out the tower window to the dark, turbulent waters far below. He feared the sea more than the death clouds from the forest.
Young and curious, he’d sneaked out the castle and followed a path, known only to the adventurous children, through the rocks and down to the sea. He’d got very close to the black brine—an arm’s length away. Then a huge wave came out of nowhere and pulled him under.
Beneath the surface, Yeston floated in a cold, wet twilight. Anaesthetised by the numbing iciness, he did not struggle. A distant dot in the gloom grew to the size of a cloud. He thought it was a school of fish, like in the river near the castle. When it drew near, he saw human faces, lily white with black eyes and hungry mouths. He screamed, and the gloom rushed down his throat. A strong hand pulled him from the water, and he saw his father’s shimmering face against a noonday sun before everything went black.
Yeston shivered at the memory as he crossed his study to the opposite window, pausing on the way to retrieve another bottle of wine from his dwindling supply. The change of view, a brooding tangle of trees above which floated clouds of yellow poison, did not alter his mood. It was just a different sort of death. He uncorked
